Monday, February 23, 2015

Malloy’s Time

Governor Dannel Malloy has more or less appointed himself as
a national progressive Democratic attack dog, according to an interview with Time magazine:
“Seizing an opportunity in a party depleted of household names not Clinton or
Obama, Malloy is rising to the occasion, positioning himself as one of the
party’s top attack dogs as the 2016 cycle approaches.”

Hailing from Connecticut, where much of the media has
placidly accepted Mr. Malloy’s progressive tax and spend program, there are no
attack dogs on the left, and so Mr. Malloy has been permitted to range freely,
biting whomever he chooses.

Time mentions a few of his victims: Governor Chris Christie
of New Jersey is one of Mr. Malloy’s favorite Kong toys. “Such a charitable
man,” Malloy said of Christie, his tongue tucked in his cheek. “He has spread
goodwill to so many places. He’s really quite remarkable, isn’t he?” Once
having described a remark made by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal as “the most
insane statement I’ve ever heard,” Mr. Malloy was barely able to contain
himself as he said Mr. Jindal would be the “toughest one to beat in the
Republican field.”

In the face of rather astounding losses – the Republican
Party in the last national elections captured the U.S. Senate, having
previously captured the US House. Republicans now command 31 of the country’s
state houses, “near a high water mark in the modern era,” said the Washington Post in an after-election analysis. Republicans now also control 67 partisan
legislative chambers across the country, "five more than their previous record
in the modern era, set after special elections in 2011 and 2012."

Mr. Malloy fears Democrats might become a “Republican lite”
party. Addressing the winter meeting of the Association of State Democratic
Chairs, the chair-designate of the Democratic Governors Association hectored
his audience: “When we run as Republican-lite we lose; let us be Democrats once
again,” a call to arms that produced a standing ovation.

It must be obvious to everyone but Mr. Malloy that
Republicans running as “Republicans lite” in the last election made remarkable
forward progress. They beat, for the most part, Democrats who had supported
Barack Obama, the most progressive Democrat in living memory whose watchword
was “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” Mr. Malloy greeted the arrival
of the progressive future with loud and continuing hosannas.

Mr. Malloy, who marches in strike lines and who imposed on
Connecticut the largest tax increase in state history, certainly is no
shrinking moderate. In Connecticut, what used to be called the vital moderate
center of the Democratic Party has all but disappeared. Democrats in the Nutmeg State are all progressives now. The state Republican Party continues to flirt
with moderation -- the head honchos at the state central have now assigned a
committee the onerous task of reviewing the possibility of opening Republican
Party primaries to unaffiliateds -- now that all of its grey-haired moderates
have fallen to the hob-nailed boots of progressives.

Mr. Malloy’s admissions to Time are the exact opposite of
the truth. Nationally, Democrats fell to
Republicans in the last election because they had eagerly embraced Mr. Obama’s
progressive programs. In his own state, weak-tea Republican fell to progressive
Democrats -- to be sure by slim margins,
but it only takes one vote beyond fifty percent to make a governor.

Conservatism in Connecticut is not a doctrine that has
been tried and found wanting; it has never been tried, which is why the state
is in dismal condition. High taxes transfer entrepreneurial capital from
businesses to government functionaries who seriously suppose they can “invest”
capital more profitably than the capitalists. Connecticut's crony capitalist governor
already has thrown away a good deal of the state’s tax haul bribing national
and international business to remain in a state that will flog them with high
taxes and burdensome regulations.

Surely the Republican Party in Connecticut can convince
everyone – students who will leave the state in search of greener pastures
elsewhere, carrying with them their very expensive sheepskins, businesses that
reflexively contribute to the winning campaigns of the floggers, the employees
of small businesses shuttered because the progressive Democratic dominated General Assembly is adamantly unwilling to
entertain real spending cuts, the poor in Connecticut whose vital programs will
be shaved by a government desperate to survive yet another fiscal year without alienating
state employees -- that conservative
prescriptions will work as well in Connecticut as they have in, just to mention
one burgeoning state, Texas, whose governor, Rick Perry, Mr. Malloy has often held up to ridicule. But the state Republican Party would have to move
off its “moderate” political dime to do this.